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Thursday, March 24, 1977
University Daily Kansan
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Election rule is vague
Student Senate estimates place the amount of money spent by the three main political coalitions in this year's student senate election at almost $4,000.
But finding out who spent what, where and how is about as easy as gnawing one's way through an uncooked pot pie.
The totals spent by presidential and vice presidential contenders in the Feb. 16 and 17 election were estimated at $903.66 for Reflection Coalition candidates Steve Leben and Ralph Munyan, the ultimate winners; $700 by Spectrum Coalition candidates Randall McKenzie and $400 spent by Avanti Coalition candidates Randy McKergen and Katie Rhoads.
AND BECAUSE the coalition heads finished in exactly that order at the polls, it is easy to leap to a speedy conclusion: Money wins elections.
But that conclusion is probably false. Its main premise, the total amount spent by presidential and vice presidential candidates, is in question: The three campaign audits filed by the contenders were drawn up in different wavs.
Section 6.5.2.5, of the Student Senate Code is partly to blame. This "vague" paragraph, as Senate Elections Committee Chairman Kevin Flym called it Wednesday, states that presidential candidates and their running mates must file the total amount spent on their campaigns, the sources of all funds, an estimate of the value of disposable items used (flyers, leaflets, and such) and the source of these items.
THAT'S ABOUT IT. Leben's detailed four-page audit is an accountant's dream. It breaks down his campaign expenses and his running mate's the separate expenses of the Reflection Coalition, and the sum total of both. It lists 18 general expense areas covering the candidates of each KKT club represented by Reflection candidates. It further breaks down the general categories into specific subcategories.
BY CONTRAST, the one-page audits filed by Grey and McKernan are less than complete. Grey made only a meager attempt to separate her and her running mate's expenses from those of the Spectrum coalition's. Flynn said he would ask Grey to file a more informative report. Included in the general headings of Grey's audit are "Miscellaneous Expenses," five items estimated to cost $240. One of the miscellaneous items listed is a "Post-election Party."
The Avanti Coalition did separate presidential and vice presidential expenditures from the coalition. But only a minority of them and they are more vague than Spectrum's.
VAGUE SENATE rules regarding campaign expenditures share only part of the blame for the present audit discrepancy. The rules are made clear and specific.
Flynn promised just that Wednesday—"a revision of the whole section on electrons."
One hopes he will keep that promise.
It wasn't too long ago (although it seems like it) that a strike by employees of cities and other municipalities was considered impossible. It just wasn't done.
But now it appears that walkouts, strikes and cases of the "blue flu" by policemen (law enforcement officers), firemen (firefighters), teachers (professional educators) and other city employees are certainly in vogue.
MORE OFFEN than not, the decision to strike is made posthaste, without much effort at mediation until after the pickets are in place and temporary restraining orders are being sought to put them back in their rightful place.
Public view cuts strike effects
Such is the action currently being carried out by teachers and school board members in Kansas City, Mo.
No one can deny that those employed for and by the public and on the public payroll should have the benefits for jobs well done.
Strikes by city employees are perhaps the most effective form of paralyzing an area, more so than almost any other act of civil disobedience. They are a form of metropolitan areas where public servants are now serving themselves first.
BUT INCREASENG, AS YOU have seen in massive walkouts, strikers hold all the trump cards and they them until the last possible
Farmers are chronic complains. As a descendant of a long line of dirt farmers, I can tell you that the land is rearrand from the rural set.
Bergland's plan for wheat cartel may not benefit U.S. in long run
Farmers complain about rain, about lack of rain, about hot weather, about cold weather and always about low temperature and prices—even in times of high production and high prices.
They are now receiving $2.30 a bushel for wheat. That doesn't mean much to the casual observer until he realizes that wheat was selling for $4 a barrel and there are few other products that cost half as much now as they did four years ago.
THUS, FARMERS' complaints are often met with criticism. This is unfortunate because today farmers have real problems to complain about similarly Kansas' wheat farmers.
The products farmers use to produce their wheat certainly haven't dropped in price. According to figures compiled by State Rep. Robert Miller, D-Wellington, expenses have increased per cent for five years to 68 per cent for four 10 per cent for seed and 71 per cent for tractors over the same period.
ADD TO that the frightening knowledge that the water table in Kansas continues to drop at a faster rate each year. This can be dry in most parts of western Kansas, and untold acres of dust blew across roads and fields in February and March because there was no surface moisture to hold dirt to the earth.
the formation of a wheat cartel that would bully the world market in the same way the Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC) have bullied it in the last few years.
Bertlgau's cartel would involve only the United States and Canada. But those two countries produce 75 per cent of the wheat entering the export market.
From all this gloom arises a plan from Secretary of culinary science and raise the price of wheat artificially. Bergland has proposed
Because our country and
was a pledge not to engage in export controls, and a price-fixing scheme would certainly qualify as an export control.
OUR COUNTRY has complained long and loud about the injustices served up by OPEC countries and about broken bonds. But we shouldn't be engaging in similar practices of our own. Particularly in these days of an American human rights
Jerry Seib
Editorial Writer
Canada produce such a healthy chunk of the wheat sold between countries, Bergland is obviously right in thinking a cartel would raise the price farmers in the Midwest receive for their wheat. Whether his plan is wise, whether his subject of considerable debate.
ON THE FACE of it, Berglund's plan raises some serious ethical questions. He course requires players have played playing games with the price of oil on the world market. That doesn't make it right for us to do the work.
If the United States joins in this game of exploiting resources, it opens itself to more repression and to some worse. No country is sufficient enough to be exempt from a round of artificially inflated prices. It's bad enough that OPEC plays this scary game; there is no reason for our trade policies to help pollute the world market.
In addition, the United States and the Soviet Union have signed a five-year agreement under which the Russians will supply wheat to Ukraine, U.S. wheat and corn each year. One article of the agreement
crusade, our country should be policing its own backyard with special care.
Some argue that ethics don't enter into international politics. But even if moral questions are tossed aside, there is no guarantee that Bergland's plan will help the farmer in the long run.
Wheat, however, is an internationally grown commodity. Hardy strains that grow under highly adverse conditions are now common. Many areas that don't grow well in warm climates if pressed to do so. There are even substitutes for wheat.
Wheat and oil are only roughly comparable as world goods. Oil can't be grown by planting it in the soil-oil was grown under the soil thousands of years ago, long before industrialization, settled it among countries. Oil can't be moved elsewhere.
IN SHORT, American and Canadian wheat could become expendable on the world market. It is highly unlikely that OPEC oil will become expendable in the near future. Comparing the bergland Bergland proposes and the one OPEC is
practicing is a case of mixing apples and oranges.
The answers to farmers' woes are to be found elsewhere. In great part, the woes are rooted in the manipulation of the ex-farmers by Nixon and Nixon administration in the early 1970s. The American wheat market became a shamles when Nixon's men quietly and unexpectedly exported tons of wheat, stopped importing raw materials, prices and began exporting again to deplete backlogs.
The American farmer was sent on a roller coaster ride he has yet to 5oish
THE WHEAT grower was also told to produce, produce, produce—a marked change from years spent purposefully on food to prevent oversupply in the market with wheat.
Kansas farmers gleefully began planting every inch of their soil, only to discover that they were working in countries were having boom years of their own. American wheat wasn't as popular as expected. The backlog problem was so acute that knocking on our door to solve it.
minute. Oftimes, they do not even consider an offer for settlement until an outside officer is appointed to mediate.
The solution might be a return to controlled production and an unfettered export market. The other proposal is to encourage farmers to sensibly limit their production and to practice soil conservation measures that will prevent damage during these dry years.
It is a confusing scene. The American farmer has seen times of boom and bust in the last five years, and he couldn't control either the good or the bad.
The plans don't offer the headline value or promise of immediate help. Bergland's might be even more beneficial, maybe more prove beneficial.
And the settlement reached,
virtually with the barrel of a gun at the city's head, turns out
that he was in a war zone in many cases.
Meanwhile, for the time
paying public, rather than the antagonist or mediator, plays the most important part in the new plan.
THE PLAN stems from action in which San Francisco voters, disgusted with a series
It was unveiled at a recent seminar sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Paul Jefferson Editorial Writer
being, the trash is picked up once more, the children are put back in school and the police are staying streets protecting and serving.
It is an endless human play and ploy, too-soon repeated with the same cast of characters.
Fortunately, some U.S. cities have instituted a workplan to relieve themselves of this municipal malady. And the tax-
of crippling and costly municipal labor disputes, overwhelmingly approved a referendum making themselves management labor-management squabbles. If any collective bargaining process reaches an impasse which not even a mediator can resolve, the union suggested settlement plus the final offers of both parties are
This plan would seem only fair. After all, it is money from the taxpayers which is being used to placate the strikers.
put on a ballot for determination by the voters.
Every year, contracts worth millions of dollars are awarded to employees between local governments and their employees—teachers, policemen, firemen, sanitation workers and paper shufflers of the city.
And with personnel costs consuming as much as 70 per cent of many city and county budgets, the settlements reached painfully at bargaining tables across America have a major impact on both tax rates and quality of government services.
PROPONENTS stress that, until now, the tax-paying public has had no way to assess the merits of municipal strike settlements. The doors were always closed when the tax-payers' money changed pockets.
Very few problems have surfaced with the new plan; it requires management tend to act more responsibly in their initial proposals and demands when the uncompromising view of the managers
Kansas City also has instituted a "goldfish bowl" for bargaining with the teachers who are currently on strike, although efforts are underway and the talks from public view.
Several other states and cities have adopted the San Francisco form of voter referendum to hold elections. It has a hallmark of collective bargaining since its inception, but in these belt-tightening times, the public needs to take a more proactive role in the allocation of its tax dollars.
We can hope that "Sunshine" laws will enlighten the public on municipal operations. It's time to look for ways to regain out of its costly closet.
Saccharin ban defended
To the editor:
On Tuesday an article by Jerry Seib was published concerning the recent ban on saccharin by the FDA. Since the moment the ban was announced, the company has been extremely popular pastime of
consideration is the effect of the substance. Who can afford to give small doses, based on human consumption, to rats for years? Certainly not the people who are using sachetin in
Seib uses words such as
reason the agency was created I suggest that people such as Mr. Selb-from the national news commentators to the laymen on the street—quiet down and listen carefully to what the FDA has to say. The only "problem" lies in the fact
Readers Respond
everyone who fancies himself an expert to blast the FDA and push for legislation in the editorials the editorial cartoonists and columnists with their lack of mercy; but, since the bandwagon rallies, right up on Trump,右上角
He refers to the situation as "typical" and potentially "humorous," and blatantly brushes off the subject of cancer as if it were last week's stock market report. I wonder whether he has ever had the experience of effects on a first-hand basis. I need not repeat recent cancer statistics here.
For Mr. Selb's information, there are independent scientists in this country who agree with the one that is being conducted Canadian group. These scientists state that the only effect the stepped-up does have is to lessen the reaction of our students to irrelevant; what is under
"irrational") to describe the FDA, and he implies that it is an illogical government agency with no sense of moderation. He admits that it is a necessary agency, but one which should keep a level head." I should keep a level head" in his article that he has in mind the solution to the whole problem. As if he, and others like him, have the qualifications to dictate answers to the FDA.
Having been raised for the past 18 years by a man who works for the FDA, I have come in contact with a number of his fellow employees. Without exception, they are well prepared to accept their work and interested in maintaining the level of integrity that the agency and its function warrants.
that some people feel they must get in their two cents worth everytime the FDA makes a move.
William Howard
Terrorism solution
To the editor:
The recent takeover of three buildings and the concurrent kidnappings by a Muslim sect in Washington seem to indicate that the attack was reached the point where it is ready to deal with this sort of extortion as it must be dealt with. In spite of all the meetings between national leaders and after all the accumulated past years, the victims of criminals, we are not ready to admit to ourselves that the answer to this proliferating style of international crime is very simple—refusing to deal with kidnappers and extortionalists, so that they eventually will stop their acts of violence.
terrorist encouraged somewhere.
If a terrorist learns that all he can expect for his troubles is imprisonment or death, he will soon stop placing himself in contact with the slightest reasonable hope of gaining results. But the implementation of this simple solution is clouded by an obvious problem. If we are to stop terrorists in this fashion, which involves sending people who will most assuredly get hurt in the weening process.
Any major international political figure, having no living relatives and espousing this view, leaves himself open to the accusation of making statements which could have no adverse effect on him; one of the exposes himself in his neck out and exposes himself with his family will become the next target of the terrorists.
That's all there to it. It each time a terrorist gets any part of what he wants, even so much as he can get a political politician, there will be another
But when we as a society finally mature to a point where we are willing to put into action the realities of civilization that there are things much worse than death? Even so simple a tactic as passive resistance has sown its potential in the Indian independence movement and made it more visible in recent history. How much longer can we afford to delay taking this simple step? ❹ hope that it won't take a war, as it did in the case of human slavery about the kind of spiritual slavery to which we are being submitted
Colleges need federal aid. not control
The nation's private colleges and universities historically have traveled a rough road. They have never been in greater peril than they are today. Once their concern was with performing their independent task well. Now their concern is with performing it at all.
It is a melancholy story, but certainly not a new one. The colleges are victims of the ancient rule that says the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But as the high school and higher education begin accepting large federal grants, the motives were noble and the process seemed benign. When Congress began funding large programs of student loans, the benevolence of the government to help students in the field of civil rights seemed justly justified.
The threat to their existence comes in part from rising costs that have pushed tuition fees to a point of diminishing returns, but this isn't the greatest cause of this. The biggest lies in the tightening grip of federal controls.
THE INSTITUTIONS had abundant warning of the course of events. Many college presidents succumbed to the terrorists' attacks.
bring federal control. But the temptations were too strong. The government's 1978 budget projects nearly $3.4 billion in various aids to higher education, an increase of 28 per cent from fiscal 1976.
Controls come in different guises. A small
James J. Kilpatrick (c) 1977 Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
Methodist college, hard-pressed for building funds, accepted a federal grant of $739,000 which imposed conditions on the college to "remove all religious symbols from the top of its chapel, to limit the number of Methodists on its board and teaching staff, to refrain from sponsoring or conducting any religious services, to remain totally neutral and the spiritual development, to ensure that all missionaries use formal prayerers, hymns and sermons from its graduation exercises."
The government's demands for affirmative
action in hiring faculty members continue to impose burdens that can be unbearable. In a speech last month, John Howard, president of Rockford College, said:
Topeka senior
"WHATEVER may have been the intent of the government, it is an indisputable fact that affirmative action has operated in such a way as to prevent many colleges from consistently hiring more foreign students than would be vacancies on its faculty. . . To permit any extraneous consideration to take precedence over professional qualifications in the appointment of faculty members is to compromise the educational process at its very core. This is a large step towards realizing that students taken toward intellectual and cultural suicide."
Some of the controls are far removed from the educational process. Federal health and safety regulations lie like an asbestos blanket across the campuses. The American Council on Education has estimated the cost of compliance with federal requirements at almost $2 billion a year. Newsweek magazine has noted the sum is "roughly equal to the entire sum the institutions
raise through voluntary donations." The burden of
infections and injections, inspections, and com-
munications reports grows grossly.
HOWARD HAS urged his colleagues to band together this year in a concert appeal to Congress and to the Carter administration: Get off our backs! He pleads eloquently for a moratorium on further manifestations of the benevolence that suffacates. He also pleads for a modest program of education for fur deduction for contributions made directly to institutions of higher learning.
The tax credit plan makes sense in principle; in practice, it could mean serious problems for the Treasury. What is needed now is a clear distinction from HFW Secretary Joseph Califano. That policy must be predicated upon a steady reduction in federal regulations, and direct grants in aid. Unless the trend of recent years can be reversed, the private institutions ultimately will have more appendages of the emipotent state. They may survive, but they will be private in name only.
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